t of ludicrous
cruelty of which I have just given you the history. It is an act which,
though not by a great deal so fierce and bloody as some of the rest, was
infinitely more ready in the execution. It was the act which gave the
greatest encouragement to those pests of society, mercenary informers
and interested disturbers of household peace; and it was observed with
truth, that the prosecutions, either carried to conviction or
compounded, for many years, had been all commenced upon that act. It was
said, that, whilst we were deliberating on a more perfect scheme, the
spirit of the age would never come up to the execution of the statutes
which remained, especially as more steps, and a cooeperation of more
minds and powers, were required towards a mischievous use of them, than
for the execution of the act to be repealed: that it was better to
unravel this texture from below than from above, beginning with the
latest, which, in general practice, is the severest evil. It was
alleged, that this slow proceeding would be attended with the advantage
of a progressive experience,--and that the people would grow reconciled
to toleration, when they should find, by the effects, that justice was
not so irreconcilable an enemy to convenience as they had imagined.

These, Gentlemen, were the reasons why we left this good work in the
rude, unfinished state in which good works are commonly left, through
the tame circumspection with which a timid prudence so frequently
enervates beneficence. In doing good, we are generally cold, and
languid, and sluggish, and of all things afraid of being too much in the
right. But the works of malice and injustice are quite in another style.
They are finished with a bold, masterly hand, touched as they are with
the spirit of those vehement passions that call forth all our energies,
whenever we oppress and persecute.

Thus this matter was left for the time, with a full determination in
Parliament not to suffer other and worse statutes to remain for the
purpose of counteracting the benefits proposed by the repeal of one
penal law: for nobody then dreamed of defending what was done as a
benefit, on the ground of its being no benefit at all. We were not then
ripe for so mean a subterfuge.

I do not wish to go over the horrid scene that was afterwards acted.
Would to God it could be expunged forever from the annals of this
country! But since it must subsist for our shame, let it subsist for our
instructi